Ashneer Grover, co-founder of BharatPe and the founder of the Fantasy gaming app Crickpe, has strongly criticized both the government and tax authorities for issuing massive tax demand notices amounting to thousands of crores of rupees, to gaming companies for alleged Goods and Services Tax (GST) evasion.
Tax authorities reportedly sent a show cause notice to Dream Sports, the parent firm of Dream11 (Sporta Technologies Private Limited), for alleged GST evasion of over Rs 40,000 crore for non-payment of 28 percent GST on the face value of bets.
Before this, Gameskraft had received a GST tax demand notice, reportedly amounting to around Rs 21,000 crore, for suspected tax evasion. Earlier this month, there were reports indicating that approximately 40 online gaming companies could soon be issued show-cause notices by the GST authorities on suspicions of tax evasion.
In response to the news reports, Ashneer Grover expressed his curiosity about the thought process of tax authorities when issuing such notices, said, "I am intrigued ki Tax vaalo ke dimaag mein kya chalta hoga aise notice bhejte samay." Grover also remarked it is like a game of Monopoly, said, "The only explanation is - kuchh nahi. Monopoly ki game chal rahi hai bas.:
He went on to say that neither will anyone be willing to pay such exorbitant taxes nor will the government be able to collect them, instead, lawyers will profit from court challenges, and that this is the harassment faced by businessmen. "Na koi tax dega itna - na Sarkar ko milega. Milegi sirf vakilo ko fees jo SC mein ise challenge karenge. Bas another day of harassing businessmen" said Grover on the social networking platform.
He also asked the question, "Agar itna GST banta tha to kya GST vaale 10 saal se so rahe the." And, said that perhaps none of the experts from the accounting firms were knoeledgeable that they were approving the tax audits of these companies. "Ya fir saare Big 4 accounting vaalo ko kuchh nahi aata ki woh companies ke tax audit pass kar rahe the," he said.
Grover also pointed out that this could be seen as a form of 'retrospective tax,' drawing a comparison to the Vodafone retrospective tax imposed during the Congress government and now, what he calls the 'Gaming GST retrospective tax' under the BJP government. He said, "This is called ‘retrospective tax’. Aaj notification nikal di (as clarification) ki pehle se aap ka tax banta tha 28% on face value."
He also humorously remarked that such actions are not going to help the government's goal of reaching a $5 trillion economy, and asked the Finance Minister and the government to address the concerns, He said, "Kind request to @FinMinIndia @PMOIndia to address this issue. not helping in our target of $5 trillion economy."
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